expected resolution date of very slow offpeak speeds?

[joregelt2]

hi

I am a new naked adsl user.
I am reasonably happy with the service during the day, but after midnight it is absolutely terrible. I am interested in doing normal web browsing, the occasional youtube video etc etc. all things that can be enjoyed on a connection that runs at about 800kbps or more. However, after midnight my adsl2+ connection (billion 7404vgpm latest firmware no other devices in the house) cannot even manage that. I have installed stat 'n perf a handy speed measuring tool and I can see that after midnight when i try to play a youtube video and measure the transfer speed it averages 320kbps (yes kbps NOT KBps, I know stat 'n perf measure in the latter, I have mulitplied by 8 ). This is barely enough to actually play the flash video files. In fact, at times they pause until they are rebuffered.

I know there have been posts from staff regarding a p2p cacher that is being filled up etc etc, but that has been a while ago now. Is this "normal" what i am experiencing now. I know that exetel has great prices, that is why I chose them, but i hope that the tradeoff is not this heavy.

If someone can suggest a solution I would love to hear it.

daniel

[James D]

Can you run a speed test during the slow time, can you run one local and one international.

Also is it slow to one media site or is all browsing slow?

[joregelt2]

I will do that tonight.
I will use exetel's own at http://www.exetel.com.au/speed/meter.php for he local, but are there preferred more "useful" overseas testers.

Unfortunately all net access is slow. I will also check with an overseas and a local ftp transfer and post those results.

daniel

[dogwomble]

I tend to think local servers are always the best place to start, only because it shows you what can be achieved under ideal circumstances. Furthermore, the infrastructure is about as much under Exetel's control as it's going to get.

International / Outside Exetel sources are also good, but bear in mind that a lot of it is beyond Exetel's control and the conditions of such can't easily be determined.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that while doing both will be useful for a general comparison, the local speed test will show you what your line is actually capable of, while anything outside of the local network cannot be guaranteed, so aren't always useful when trying to gauge overall performance. (And hence my position of using things like speed test sites as a "guide only").

[joregelt2]

Hi

Here are 5 speed tests from the above linked exedtel speed tester, performed immediately after one another at 20:30 tonight
All are Mbps as the website shows at he top

1.52
1.68
2.29
2.21
2.01

Not that great, for adsl2+, especially when line speed is

Upstream 824000
Downstream 16160457


Downstream Upstream
SNR Margin 12.0 dB 13.5 dB
Line Attenuation 24.5 dB 12.0 dB

I will repeat after midnight and I expect the values will be well under 1 Mbps, but we will see.

Daniel

[joregelt2]

here is some more info to digest.

Repeated speed tests from the exetel exetel speed tester from between 0015 and 0020 at night. All are kbps
909.2, 976, 731.2, 1006.4, 1180, 1060, 962.4

Then I started up some large file transfers. 2 different 600MB iso's from the exetel mirror and 2 ubuntu livecd's, one from the optus mirror and one from the iinet mirror. Over multiple 1 minute measurements using stat 'n' perf, while all 4 files were transferring, i averaged around 450 KBps, or 3600 kbps.
Clearly much faster than with the exetel speed test.
Going to youtube my transfer speed while a video is still downloading (buffering) averages out to 30KBps (240kbps) and it goes without saying that at this speed there are pauses in the music, as this is insufficient to play the flash video in realtime. What is interesting is, if i simultaneously try to download 2 youtube videos then the average download speed pretty much doubles. If I was very cynical I would almost say that it seems like exetel are allocating a pitiful bandwidth allotment per request, and as I ramp up the number of simultaneous http/ftp requests/datastreams, my connection starts to be a bit more respectable. Problem is that I am a human and I can only read/listen to one thing, but it would be nice if I didn't have to wait for that one thing.

Looking forward to suggestions.

Daniel

[CoreyPlover]

If I was very cynical I would almost say that it seems like exetel are allocating a pitiful bandwidth allotment per request, and as I ramp up the number of simultaneous http/ftp requests/datastreams, my connection starts to be a bit more respectable.

Any "bandwidth allotment per request" is actually a result of the remote site capping the speed per outgoing stream, and not a result of anything that Exetel does.

Single off-peak speed tests resulting in half that of peak time tests is expected. At midnight, P2P usage soars and is capped at 50% of total bandwidth (as per Exetel's bandwidth management policy), so speed reductions of 50% in other traffic is to be expected.

Multiple download streams that can top out at about 3.5Mbps also suggest your connection (at least, your computer <-> Exetel) is adequate (well short of your sync speed I'm afraid, but "adequate" in the telecommunication industry sense of >1.5Mbps). I am not sure that anything can be done about this as it would seem the speed bottlenecks are outside of Exetel's network and limited to the maximum throughput of single international streams.

[joregelt2]

what you say is probably true, but I think it would be unlikely that youtube or another streaming media site, would cap their bandwidth per stream to less than is required to view their own content. Don't you agree that this would be a little counterintuitive??

I do not understand why 3.5 Mbps when sync is 16 Mbps is considered adequate. Exetels mirror should be able to send me data much faster than that, if it just me <---> exetel, and not influenced by general "congestion".

I think that I am entitled to be a little concerned and unsatisfied if my adsl2+ connection that syncs at 16 Mbps can only transfer data at 200 kbps. This is almost not enough for VOIP, and certainly not enough for VOIP + surfing.

It is fine that exetel allocates 50% of their bandwidth to p2p after midnight, but it seems that the remaining 50% isn't enough to provide a basic level of service to non p2p applications. Average throughput falling from 5 Mbps to 2 Mbps is one thing, but real world performance falling to the point where there are long waits for pages to load, and a radio stream from the abc breaks up, is quite another!!

I hope someone can come forward with suggestions as to how I can improve performance.

daniel

[3lusiv3]

^^^ Exactly. Well said.

[CoreyPlover]

what you say is probably true, but I think it would be unlikely that youtube or another streaming media site, would cap their bandwidth per stream to less than is required to view their own content. Don't you agree that this would be a little counterintuitive??

The internet is a complex thing. I'm not saying that Youtube have a configuration option on their server saying "limit streams to 300Kbps". The routing path that the traffic is travelling may go through numerous hops that are bottlenecked in speed or subject to QoS protocols. The resulting nature that you see are speed limited individual streams. This phenomenom has existed on the internet for a long time; it is the premise on which download accelerators are marketed (they break a single file down into multiple parts and make each part download individually, then amalgamate the result).

I do not understand why 3.5 Mbps when sync is 16 Mbps is considered adequate.

That is just the convention that ADSL providers have been set by the telecommunication ombudsman (i.e. anything >1.5Mbps is "adequate" regardless of technicalities. Your circumstances are an unfortunate byproduct of this.

Exetels mirror should be able to send me data much faster than that, if it just me <---> exetel, and not influenced by general "congestion".

My understanding of congestion is that it exists at multiple levels in any network. Your individual connection / sync speed of 16Mbps is only one of these levels. Your exchange may be linked to a high number of heavy ADSL users causing congestion at the exchange level. The local Exetel network through which the mirror is connected may experience congestion. Out beyond the Exetel mirror you have the wider Optus/Powertel infrastructure, the national infrastructure, the individual cables on the sea bed connecting Australia with the world, etc. Many areas for congestion to arise, in mirrors and international sites

I think that I am entitled to be a little concerned and unsatisfied if my adsl2+ connection that syncs at 16 Mbps can only transfer data at 200 kbps. This is almost not enough for VOIP, and certainly not enough for VOIP + surfing.

Your 200kbps speeds are based solely on Youtube. You are getting 3.5Mbps average speeds in real-world traffic. This is the performance you should be basing your conclusions on, which is sufficient enough for VOIP and surfing.

[netsurfer]

I just would like to add something.

There is the issue of the bandwidth-delay product. Due to some technical details and historic issues with the TCP protocol, the default settings for windows XP would allow around 300-500kB/s if the delay is around 200ms (typical for US, more than that for Europe, 50ms for Australia), the more the delay the less available bandwidth you have.

Improving the bandwidth requires fiddling with the registery and understanding the TCP protocol (used for HTTP, FTP, among other things). If you look around there are sites which talk about these issues.

[joregelt2]

this thread is rapidly descending into irrelevant details.
I would like to stress that my only interest is in a decently functioning connection. Unfortunately I do not have the time (although the interest maybe?) to learn the finer points of the tcp/ip protocol. It should not be necessary to registry hack windows XP to get decent speeds out of an adsl2 connection. I am not trying to eek every last bit of performance out of this, who are we kidding, I am just trying to view web pages without waiting a lot, and listen to some streaming media that doesn't use really high datarates. One should be able to do that on much less than adsl2. In fact a well functioning 1.5Mbps link is ample for that. It is not my laptop that is the problem as in other networks I have no speed problems.

To address a few points first

1. No-one uses download accelerators to surf normal largely text based websites or media streams. They shouldn't be necessary and are not useful.
2. I think it is not fair to say I am getting 3.5Mbps average real world traffic. This is a totally artificial value, that I obtained when I was testing my connection. Yes if I want to download 4 iso's at once then great, I can transfer all faster at once than each in turn. This is not useful to me. What I think is more important is that my most basic internet usage ie. normal website surfing is at times worse than on a 512/128 connection.

Why I would like to hear; and any staff members from exetel please feel free to give me some sugestions, is what I can do to improve the speed in real world usage. Otherwise if this adsl2+ is only any good for multithreaded binary ftp transfers and p2p, then perhaps I have bought the wrong service, but how could I have known, as that is not written anywhere???

Please, no more ephemeral explanations about the nature of the internet. A few suggestions on how my single threaded transfers from any website after midnight can get above an average of 250kbps are very welcome.

Daniel

[tocpcs]

Daniel.

The issue after midnight is definitely congestion, I can confirm this as my own testing shows that the speed from Exetel's own mirror drops rapidly.

In fact, case in point, right now, I'll get this ISO:
http://mirror.exetel.com.au/pub/centos/ ... n-1of6.iso

It is cruising at a steady 600KB/sec.

You don't need to use multiple connections to get maximum speed off the connection either. So, that speed is still lower then my maximum of 1.05MB/sec, but, it is acceptable. There is obvious congestion on the link from Exetel to me on Optus ADSL2+, is my guess.

After midnight, I'll update this post with what speed I get.

EDIT: Congestion confirmed, look at MRTG graphs, it's hitting the top. Though it does say "Plus".. but the "Plus" doesn't seem to be working.
Look at yearly graphs, last year has seen bandwidth consumption grow 4 times!

[James]

Browsing seems fine for me atm.

Speeds are fine too, but a lil slower as brother is downloading some files;

[James]

Just tried YouTube then, is working fine, no buffering; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMN_Xvk3spA

Speeds still fine, despite brother downloading;